Field of the Invention
The disclosure relates to a plant control system, a controller, a manager, and a plant information processing method.
Priority is claimed on Japanese Patent Application No. 2013-255420, filed Dec. 10, 2013, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
Description of Related Art
A DCS (Distributed Control System) is installed in a plant and a factory (hereinafter called simply “plant” as a generic name of them). In the distributed control system, a field device (for example, a measurement device, an operation device, a display device, an alarm device, or other devices) and a controller controlling the field device are connected via a communication unit. By the distributed control system, an advanced automatic operation is implemented. In the distributed control system, process data necessary for a process control is transferred mutually between the controller and the field device.
Recently, a PAM (Plant Asset Management) system is often installed with the distributed control system so as to increase efficiency of the plant to a maximum extent possible. The plant asset management system performed facility maintenance and predictive maintenance of devices and apparatuses installed in the plant, and the plant asset management system maintains and manages the facility in an appropriate state over a long time. In the plant asset management system, a manager which is a core apparatus of the plant asset management system collects information necessary for the facility management from the field device. Between the plant asset management system and the distributed control system, alarm information of the field device collected by the plant asset management system is transmitted to the distributed control system.
In the non-patent document 1 (Mori, Machida, Ozaki, Sukegawa, “Field Device Management Package “PRM”,” YOKOGAWA technical report, Vol. 45, No. 3, 2001), an exemplary plant control system in which the distributed control system and the plant asset management system are installed is disclosed. Specifically, in the plant control system disclosed in the non-patent document 1, the distributed control system includes an FCS (Field Control Station) and an HIS (Human Interface Station), and the plant asset management system includes a server of a PRM (registered trademark) (Plant Resource Manager) and a client.
In many cases, the field devices used by the distributed control system and the plant asset management system have basic functions. For example, the basic functions include transferring a measurement result such as a flow rate, a temperature, and so on, or adjusting an aperture of a valve under the control of the controller. However, because the recent field devices are digitalized and become intelligent, and most of the recent field devices have an additional function (for example, self-diagnosis function) in addition to the basic functions.
Because the field devices are digitalized and become intelligent, a large amount of information is obtained from the field devices with the information obtained by the basic function. For example, information indicating a current state of the field device is obtained from the field device having the self-diagnosis function. For example, because an abnormality of the field device can be detected early by using the obtained information, it is useful for operating the plant safely and efficiently.
However, the more the amount of the information obtained from the field device is, the more load of the apparatus (the controller in the distributed control system and the manager in the plant asset management system) processing the information is. Also, it is difficult to distinguish between necessary information and unnecessary information. Therefore, although many types of information can be obtained by the field device which is digitalized and intelligent, there is a problem that the information obtained from the field device cannot be used effectively.